Aristotle's Metaphysics: Form, Matter and Identity (Continuum Studies in Ancient Philosophy)

172 Pages·2009·0.53 MB·English

by  Jeremy Kirby

Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Continuum Studies in Ancient Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Continuum Studies in Ancient Philosophy is a major monograph series from
Continuum. The series features fi rst-class scholarly research monographs
across the fi eld of Ancient Philosophy. Each work makes a major
contribution to the fi eld of philosophical research.
Aristotle and Rational Discovery, Russell Winslow
Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Jeremy Kirby
Aristotle’s Theory of Knowledge, Thomas Kiefer
The Enduring Signifi cance of Parmenides, Raymond Tallis
Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought, M. Andrew Holowchak
The Ideas of Socrates, Matthew S. Linck
Plato, Metaphysics and the Forms, Francis A. Grabowski III
Plato’s Stepping Stones, Michael Cormack
Pleasure in Aristotle’s Ethics, Michael Weinman
The Socratic Method, Rebecca Bensen Cain
Stoic Ethics, William O. Stephens
Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Form, Matter, and Identity
Jeremy Kirby
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© Jeremy Kirby 2008
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: HB: 1-8470-6246-6
ISBN-13: HB: 978-1-8470-6246-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kirby, Jeremy.
Aristotle’s metaphysics : form, matter, and identity/Jeremy Kirby.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-84706-246-8
1. Aristotle. Metaphysics. 2. Metaphysics. I. Title.
B434.K57 2008
110.92--dc22 2008018905
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk
For Marlo
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Contents
Introduction 1
1. Matters of Individuation 9
2. Resurrection and Entrapment 45
3. Aristotle on Composition and the Puzzle of Unity 67
4. Particularities and the Puzzle of Composition 101
Conclusion 132
Notes 139
Bibliography 151
Index 157
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Introduction
The Metaphysics of Aristotle
The fi rst known work containing the term “metaphysics” in its title,
or at least an ancestor of that term, was a work belonging to Aristotle.
This particular work was distinguished from his other treatises, or
other tracts, so it seems, by an editor in the fi rst century CE, com-
monly thought to be Andronicus of Rhodes.1 At that time, the work
in question was called “ta meta ta physika,” or the stuff after the stuff
on physics. The stuff on “physics” would be contained in Aristotle’s
treatise known to us as the Physics. Thus, Aristotle’s Metaphysics seems
to have been thought of as a work that comes after, in some sense of
the term, the Physics. And while it is not clear precisely what the sense
in question is, it is tempting to think that editors thought that stu-
dents should come to the more abstract problems of the Metaphysics,
only after grappling with those problems found in Aristotle’s natural
philosophy.
Precisely what metaphysics is, as a discipline, is an interesting philo-
sophical question in its own right. Aristotle’s Metaphysics concerns
a number of wide-ranging topics about reality as a whole. Therein,
he is concerned, among other things, with the nature and varieties of
causation, the nature of substance and property, the existence of an
unmoved-mover, and the nature of possibility and actuality. And, to
this day, these are perennial issues that will be taken up in almost any
survey of metaphysics.
To be sure, Aristotle treats a number of issues in other sections
of the corpus that would, nowadays, be considered metaphysical.
And, in the Metaphysics, there are discussions that might not be
thought of by a number of contemporary philosophers to be ade-
quately described as metaphysical. So one can hardly understand
metaphysics simply as the discipline that treats the topics taken up in